From now through January 15, Google, king of free on the Web (just ask Rupert "the Grinch" Murdoch), is taking its show on the proverbial road to help ease some of the strain the FAA-estimated 100 million people traveling through participating airports will feel as they encounter crowds, delays, and rebookings.

Now, that's quite a list of destinations, but in addition, Google is picking up the tab for Virgin America's in-flight Wi-Fi, so jetters can do their holiday shopping from 35,000 feet without paying a fee.

Where's the catch? This is Google – they must be mining your data, building a profile on you, or they wouldn't be giving this away, right? Actually, no.

The only slightly commercial aspect of Google's gesture is that, when logging on to the free Wi-Fi, users will be encouraged to try out the Google Chrome browser, and to change their homepages to Google. But hey, both of those are free (and easy to ignore), and Chrome actually has some pretty impressive security chops.